Every year I give late night remarks at Phreaknic in Nashville, TN, usually about politics and civil liberties. As this convention is also a party, the tradition has evolved into a "drunken rant" in which I'm expected to be intoxicated and people actually bring alcohol for me to drink while I'm speaking. While it makes for good fun, by the end of the talk I'm usually not so good at answering questions that people have. Thinking back on last nights remarks, there are a couple of questions that I think I could have responded to more clearly.

First, Hardwarez asked me why I didn't vote for Romney. I prattled off something about "47%" but it wasn't a good answer to his question.

By 2012 it was clear that Obama hadn't done much to support civil liberties while in office, in spite of all of the statements that he had made over the years to the contrary. He did visibly order the military to stop torturing detainees. Furthermore, based on the information that was available at the time of the election, I thought that Obama had at least not continued to engage in the same sins that the Bush administration had engaged in. This wasn't enough to make me a big Obama fan, but on the balance he appeared to be a better friend to civil liberties that Romney.

Romney has called for suspicionless surveillance of muslims, on account of their religion, as well as foreign exchange students. He explicitly endorsed illegal wiretapping by the Bush Administration. His campaign privately planned to reverse the one useful thing that Obama had accomplished - they planned to rescind the prohibition on torture. Furthermore, they also announced that they would increase enforcement of obscenity laws.

As someone who is concerned about civil liberties, Romney's campaign was not attractive.

Now, in light of what Edward Snowden has revealed, it is clear that my reasons for support Obama in 2012 have largely been invalidated. Obama has actually committed at least two of the three civil liberties sins that I accused Bush of committing in the blog post that I wrote prior to the 2012 election. He has engaged in illegal surveillance and promoted expansive interpretations of the PATRIOT Act that stretch it to the breaking point. Whats worse, he did these things in spite of having campaigned on the idea that he was a friend of civil liberties. At least with Romney, you knew what you were going to get.

While there are some Republicans who support... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]